The Flyers are just bad enough, and it’s the worst thing about them | Mike Sielski

Here’s the maddening thing about the Flyers: They’re not terrible, and that’s their worst quality. They can be good sometimes, really good. But they’re also just bad enough in a few, important places, in a couple of vital aspects of winning hockey — and those aspects and the team’s degree of just-badness might change from one game to the next — to drive you crazy. They don’t shatter into a million shards, at least not most nights. They’re an ice cube under a warm lamp. You don’t see it melting, but in the end, there’s the puddle.

Take Tuesday night, their 4-2 loss to the Bruins in perhaps the most important game of their season. They had beaten the Bruins in overtime Monday night, and a regulation victory Tuesday would have put them a point behind Boston in the standings, a point out of a playoff spot.

“We knew what was at stake going into this game,” coach Alain Vigneault said, and in certain ways, one could see the Flyers’ desperation reflected in their play and in the game’s details. They fired 42 shots, including an astounding 25 in the second period, at Bruins goaltender Jeremy Swayman, who is 22 and was making his NHL debut. They rallied from a two-goal deficit. Again, they can be good sometimes.

» READ MORE: Observations from the Flyers’ loss to Boston

And again, they’re too often just bad enough, and Tuesday was their entire season — and several previous seasons similar to this one — boiled down into 60 minutes of frustration. Consider the final two minutes, when the Flyers, down a goal and with an extra skater on the ice, couldn’t outmuscle the Bruins in the corner of Boston’s defensive zone, wasting 20-30 precious seconds struggling just to get the puck, let alone launch it at Swayman. Which they did just four times in the third period. The entire period. Four shots. With their season on the line. After 25 in the second.

“There’s a little more urgency when you’re down two goals and you need a big win,” defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere said, which raised the question of why the Flyers weren’t playing with that additional urgency in the game’s first period, when Boston’s Patrice Bergeron scored twice, or the third, when Brad Marchand scored shorthanded to break the 2-2 tie and Bergeron added an empty-net goal.

“We came out with a vengeance,” Gostisbehere said, “and for us, just playing hockey, realizing what we were doing out there, we were chipping pucks in deep, going to work, and making it hard to play against [us]. That’s our hockey right there.”

» READ MORE: Flyers’ playoff chances dim as they fall to shorthanded Boston Bruins, 4-2

Sure it is. It’s their hockey when they’re good, which happens only sometimes. Consider goaltender Carter Hart, who started Tuesday after Brian Elliott beat the Bruins the night before. Hart stopped 23 shots. He was OK. But of the three goals he allowed, two sneaked through his legs, and one came on a rebound he couldn’t control, and when Vigneault was asked afterward to evaluate Hart’s performance, he did not deliver a four-star review.

“Carter’s a young goaltender playing a real tough position,” he said. “He’s trying his best.”

It didn’t take an expert in subliminal communication to recognize that Vigneault wasn’t thrilled that his 22-year-old goalie had been outplayed by the Bruins’ 22-year-old goalie. Hey, the coach had his pick of disappointments. Maybe a four-shot third period just didn’t rank.

“We checked when it was time to check,” Vigneault said after Tuesday’s game. “Didn’t give them a lot of looks. We got some great looks. We weren’t able to finish. They were able to finish. That was the difference. ...

“When you get your opportunities, you’ve got to make the other team pay. When they get opportunities, hopefully you get a save that gives you confidence and momentum. Tonight, both of those opportunities, we’re getting some grade-A looks that we’re not able to bury, and they were able to find the back of the net.”

So the Flyers have reached that point that they have reached frequently over the last decade, the point at which they have to play better than they have all season just to salvage their season. They have 18 games left, including one Thursday night against the division-leading Islanders and another matchup against Boston on Saturday. They are in sixth place in the eight-team Eastern Division, five points behind the Bruins — who have two games in hand — and with the same number of points as, but fewer regulation victories than, the Rangers.

» READ MORE: For Flyers, three games with Bruins this week could define their season

“Still a lot of points to play for here,” forward Oskar Lindblom said, “so we can’t go down in the basement and not play anymore.”

Oh, no, they’ll play, and they’ll be good. Sometimes. And then their season will end, and someone will have to get a mop.